HIS creations have adorned the heads and chests of stars such as Mel Gibson, Kate Winslet, Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren but prop maker Martin Adams refuses to have his head turned by Hollywood.

HIS creations have adorned the heads and chests of stars such as Mel Gibson, Kate Winslet, Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren but prop maker Martin Adams refuses to have his head turned by Hollywood.

In fact the man who has worked on blockbuster movies such as the first four Harry Potters, Atonement, The Da Vinci Code and Pirates of the Caribbean creates his works of art in a converted garage at his home in the Black Country.

And the 58-year-old credits his childhood experiences with Aldridge Youth Theatre as the inspiration which set him on the road to working with the stars. As a youngster Martin trained with the youth theatre and discovered an interest in creating scenery and props but never considered it as a career.

Having studied at Aldridge School in Tynings Lane and Shooting Butts School in Staffordshire, the death of his father Dennis when Martin was just 16 meant he felt a need to begin working towards a job.

“I had the best of intentions and went to West Bromwich College to study as an architectural technician but I hated it,” he recalls. “One night I was at Aldridge Youth Theatre and there was a man there called Neville Ellis, who in fact is still with the theatre, and he said why didn’t I think of doing for a living what I did for a hobby.

“I had never thought of it in that way but he said I was very good at what I did, that I could make something out of nothing and why didn’t I investigate?”

Which is what Martin did and he then gained a place at Croydon College of Art to study theatre design for three years.

“It was a general all round course which gave me experience in making props, scenery, set building, painting – it all helped me see how everything inter-related.”

As a job to help pay for his years as a student, Martin made models for shows which meant his name was soon known in theatrical companies.

“In those days most companies ran their own support departments and people talked to each other so bit by bit I did work for different people. If I was making a model they would find out I could also do props so I would do a bit and that meant people got to know my work.”

After college, Martin worked in West End and touring theatre.

“I did so many shows. One of the most memorable was making props for Hamlet at the National Theatre,” he says. “And more recently I have done things like buckles in Chicago and crowns in Wicked.”

From theatre Martin moved on to include television work with his first commission being to create props for a televised version of Verdi’s opera Macbeth for the BBC. After a few years of television work including shows such as diverse as Dr Who, Brideshead Revisited, Black Adder, Blake’s Seven and The Goodies, he took his first tentative steps towards Hollywood.

“A guy I knew from the BBC was doing some work on the film Jabberwocky and he then did Life of Brian so I did some bits and pieces for him,” he recalls. “That was how I gradually made the transition into films.

This was the late seventies and Martin was gradually realising that he wanted to specialise.

“I had been making so many different things but it made sense to specialise,” he says. “When you make armour you use fibre glass and you have all these huge mouldings and sandings and although the result is rewarding the work itself is horrible. And about this time there was a real move for animatronics which meant so many people were working in that.

“I realised that I really liked making jewellery related props so that is where I tended to concentrate my efforts.”

And it paid off as from the early eighties Martin created work for films such as Highlander, Dangerous Liaisons, Jewel of the Nile, Return of the Jedi, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Tomb Raider, The Queen, Valkyrie and La Vie en Rose.

Now having worked on more than 150 movies, Martin still has his favourites.

“I was really pleased with the work I did on The Last Emperor,” he says. “I was heading the team for props there and we worked on it for months. I will always remember one scene where we had hundreds of people to dress and we had to start really early in the morning. It was filmed in the Forbidden City in Beijing and once we had finished we were free to just wander around on our own. Seeing the sun rise in the Forbidden City when it was more or less deserted was something I will never forget. Gladiator was also brilliant as I was principal jeweller for that which meant I was working in location in London and Seville. And I have just finished six months working on Nottingham, the new Russell Crowe film, where I have been making bracelets, earrings, necklaces etcetera since February.”

But ask Martin about the likes of Russell Crowe and he is unwilling to spill the beans on what they are ‘really’ like.

“People always want to know what it is like to meet the stars but usually it is only a fleeting moment and it is work,” he says.

“The one person I worked with who was just delightful though was Glenn Close. I loved working on 101 and 102 Dalmatians as the pieces were really interesting – diamond handcuffs, snake brooches, dog biscuit buttons, wild broken glass earrings. It was such fun and I really felt my work was appreciated.”

Martin creates the pieces initially in wax, then makes a rubber mould and finally produces in pewter which is then sprayed to the required metal to look like gold or silver. And although the stones may look precious to the viewer, in the majority of cases they are glass.

Martin’s work built up until he was running a London workshop with a team of up to 35 staff at one point but he closed that and returned to Aldridge in 2003 after the death of his mother Mary. Here he turned his garage into a workshop where he carefully creates the pieces which go on to be seen by millions.

And like any job, he has his good and his not so good days.

“When I worked on Titanic I made a butterfly hair clip which you see in the hands of the old woman at the beginning when it is all decayed and then you see it again when Kate Winslet is younger. She wears it in her hair when she is at the prow of the ship with Leonardo DiCaprio,” he says.

“But also for that film we were commissioned to make 150 hair pieces for a ballroom scene.

“It took weeks and they were so beautiful but when you watch the movie there is no ballroom scene.

“The film proved to be too long so they cut it.

“Sometimes something I have made is given a lot of exposure in a film. For example I made a scorpion bracelet for The Mummy Returns and I had to make it in all different sizes and just about everyone gets to wear it – from a child to The Rock.

“But I also made the belt buckle for Hagrid in the first four Harry Potter films and when the movie came out I looked at all the posters and Hagrid had a lantern right in front of his belt buckle so you couldn’t see it.”

Martin still does a good deal of work for theatre and dance, creating pieces for Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Beauty and the Beast and the Queen musical We Will Rock You which is currently at the Birmingham Hippodrome.

And he has jazzed up various models at Madame Tussauds museums across the globe.

“I copied some jewellery for the model of Camilla,” he says. “And I have done pieces for Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I had to do the Audrey Hepburn four times for four different museums.” At the moment Martin is taking a well-earned break although he has a few projects up his sleeve.

“This is actually a surprisingly small world and people tend to know of each other,” he says. “There are probably only a handful of people doing what I do, specialising in jewellery-related props so I don’t have to go out looking for work. I have been doing this since 1976 and in all that time I have only had two weeks without work.”

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